


Hyung/Dongsaeng

by bunnoculars



Category: SHINee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 07:15:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13806159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bunnoculars/pseuds/bunnoculars
Summary: Two conversations set in 2016, around the release ofPress ItandShe Is.Jonghyun wants Taemin to lean on him, and Taemin wants Jonghyun to do the same. The problem for both is figuring out how to get there.





	Hyung/Dongsaeng

**Hyung**

 

“Hyung~”

“Taemin-ah.”

“Hyung~~”

“Acting cute won’t work when you’re cute no matter what you do. Hyung has built up an immunity~”

Still, it’s getting dangerous, so Jonghyun heads into the bathroom to spit out his toothpaste and straighten his face, but that leaves him alone with his reflection. When he emerges Taemin has made himself into a diagonal slash across Jonghyun’s gigantic hotel bed, feet dangling off one corner and arms stretching out to reach the other.

“I’m not leaving until you give my song back to me,” he tells Jonghyun.

Jonghyun isn’t impressed. “It’s my song, though.”

“I’ll stay here all night if I have to,” Taemin persists. As if that’s a threat.

“Wow, Taeminnie, you’re putting your body on the line?” Jonghyun says, playing along and enjoying it way too much. “In the old days people had to kneel in the dirt and starve themselves to get their way, but you’re going to sleep on someone else’s bed? Aigoo, I’m moved. Your sincerity moves me.”

The thing is, Jonghyun started all this. He hadn’t known that he’d end up with Taemin in his bed and refusing to leave, but those are just the particulars. Whenever he messes with Taemin, he never knows what’s going to happen, just that something will, and that’s the whole point.

Anyway. They’re on tour in Japan right now, but when they get back to Korea, things are going to get crazy pretty fast, because they’re both making comebacks this year—their first solo LPs. Taemin goes first, and he’s already done recording, has already shot his video and posed for six million photos, is already booked on all the music shows less than a month from now. He’s played Jonghyun the album in bits and pieces and now front to back, over and over and over, and at the beginning he’d come to Jonghyun for help, too. Jonghyun had given him two songs, Taemin had accepted both and then used only one—“Already”—and today Jonghyun might’ve lied and told him he needed it back, to use on his own album instead.

And he’s happy to let Taemin believe him, but he doesn’t really know why he ever would. He gets that Taemin’s grasp on reality is tenuous, so it’s possible he doesn’t realize SM has printed off liner notes and pressed CDs by now, but Jonghyun has pulled this same trick on him so many different times and ways over the years and somehow Taemin still doesn’t know better. Maybe it comes down to Taemin being his exact opposite, maybe Taemin just can’t let it go if there’s even the slightest chance Jonghyun actually believes he could ever get away with anything.

Jonghyun gets on the bed and picks his way over Taemin, carefully laying himself parallel to the line of Taemin’s body. They have a stand off, matching each other’s movements like praying mantises, but Jonghyun gets ahold of Taemin’s wrists first and Taemin doesn’t try to kick him off in the end. That’s slightly disappointing, but Taemin is already forgetting he’s not supposed to smile at him, so it evens out.

“Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun begins, then hesitates. “You can’t have ‘Already’…but I can give ‘Cocktail’ back to you if you want.”

“What do you mean, give it back? I told you I’m hanging onto that one for next time,” Taemin huffs, but uncertainty steals into his features, and Jonghyun can tell he’s actually surprised.

It fucks with Jonghyun a little.

“Don’t you think you’re being a little greedy? You didn’t even want it anyway.” All of the sudden Jonghyun can feel a mood coming on, can read it in the tightening in his chest and the weight of his limbs, and he doesn’t want Taemin to see, so he stares at the ceiling instead. “Whatever, I’m putting ‘Cocktail’ on my album, too.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want it, hyung,” Taemin says, and that fucks with him a little more.

“That’s kind of hard to believe, when there was nothing stopping you, and you didn’t use it,” Jonghyun says, and great, now his voice has stopped sounding like his own, too. He doesn’t know why he gets like this over nothing, why he’s never been able to change. He lies there for a minute and tries not to push, even though he knows he’s going to, and sure enough, “And it’s okay if you don’t, I’m not trying to make this into a thing, but why is it so hard for you to just tell me when you don’t like something? You think I can’t take it?”

“I like ‘Cocktail,’” Taemin insists, and for a while that’s all he can get out. Jonghyun thinks Taemin is probably looking at the ceiling by now, too, he always has a hard time watching when things start to go wrong like this. Then, “But even if I did hate it, who cares, when you just decide what I think about stuff all on your own, and you ignore everything I say.”

Ouch.

“Okay,” Jonghyun says, taking a deep breath. “Why didn’t you use it, then?”

“Okay,” Taemin echoes, and Jonghyun waits. “First of all, it’s too high for me—”

“You mean it’s too hard, I know for a fact it’s not too high,” shoots out of Jonghyun before he can shut himself up. Taemin ignores him, pushes on—

“And then there’s the part where it took years just to convince people I have sex, can you imagine how they’d take it if I put on like I go to bars and pick up women? They’d just laugh at me, hyung,” Taemin says, and the strain in his voice tells Jonghyun that these are things he never should have made Taemin say.

He forgets all that when there’s a rustle and Taemin sits up, and out of nowhere he’s all Jonghyun can see again. Looking up at him, his tight mouth and clear angry eyes, Jonghyun feels stupid for getting so worked up, so scared this thing taking hold of him would get Taemin, too.

“You didn’t even write it for me, you wrote it for yourself. You just like to act like that’s the same thing, when it’s not,” Taemin tells him from on high, and if he’s not right, he’s not exactly wrong, either. But he loses Jonghyun when he adds, “You know I can’t do everything you can do, but you pretend you don’t, and then you turn around and act like I’m the one who’s worried about hurting your feelings.”

Just breathing the same air as Taemin can put Jonghyun at peace, and the business of being happy and lovable comes so naturally to Taemin compared to the rest of them that Jonghyun forgets too easily about this other side of him, the Taemin that can say the shittiest things about himself like it’s nothing, and scorns his own tears. They knew each other for years before it even occurred to Jonghyun that Taemin _could_ hate himself—Taemin has always been shy, has always been low on confidence, but he’s struggled against himself and come out on top more than anyone else Jonghyun knows. It doesn’t seem right that it’s never made any difference inside.

Jonghyun wants to touch him, pet his hair and pull him back down onto the mattress and hold him, squeeze a smile out of him, but he knows that’s selfish. Instead he says, “Let’s go point by point,” and sits up, too, so that they’re face-to-face.

“One: If you start trying to be the person everyone else thinks you are, you’ll go crazy.” Jonghyun figures he’ll fight Taemin on the obvious stuff so maybe he’ll listen when Jonghyun really needs him to, but Taemin just goes quiet, throws him off. He watches Taemin’s hands picking at the bedspread, says as gently as he can, “You’ve worked so hard to get this far on your own, and I understand wanting to protect that, but the reason you started all this was to have your own life. That means doing what you want to do, not what anybody else expects you to do.”

And still Taemin doesn’t say anything, and Jonghyun is starting to get nervous, starting to forget he has things he wants to say, stretched thin trying to find the words that will get Taemin to lift his head.

“Besides, you’re already twenty-four, you’re running out of time. You want to come back as a man before you have to come back as an ahjussi, right~?”

“Then have you come back as a man yet, hyung? At this rate I might beat you to it~” Taemin retorts, because of course fucking with him works where being sweet didn’t. A couple seconds ago Taemin couldn’t even meet his gaze and now he’s rolling his eyes at him. “I don’t get what this has to do with anything, anyway. We started out talking about one song and now you’re talking about my whole life.”

Jonghyun is okay with moving on. He watches Taemin’s face closely as he says, “All right, fine, two: You know that song isn’t about going to bars, or cocktails, or hitting on women. Or women.”

“I know that, but no one else would, thank God,” Taemin says a little too quickly, like he’s trying to pretend the admission came cheaply. Jonghyun refers him back to point one, and lets himself linger, following the blush rising up Taemin’s cheeks.

Taemin doesn’t give him any time, says impatiently, “I’m different from you, hyung,” but his hand steals up and he strokes a finger down Jonghyun’s nose, softening his words. “As long as you understand me, and no one else misunderstands me, I’m fine. I don’t need to put myself out there.”

Just like that there are a million things on the tip of Jonghyun’s tongue, but he doesn’t know who he wants to say them for, Taemin or himself. Even so, the fight is rising in him again, and he wants to stop here and argue, despite everything he just forced Taemin into telling him. Despite knowing how lame he is, giving Taemin a song Jonghyun wrote about him like some kind of confession, and that “Cocktail” only feels so important because he doesn’t know how else to bring what’s inside him out into real life. He and Taemin no longer have a name for what’s between them—they can’t be family anymore, and maybe they can’t be boyfriends, either, and Jonghyun doesn’t want to be friends—but it’s not going to go away, and they both know it, and that means this all can wait.

The important thing right now is Taemin. Jonghyun flops down on his back and goes back to the ceiling, because he thinks he might lose control if he looks at him any longer.

“Number three,” he says slowly, testing the atmosphere. Taemin settles down next to him again, staring up too, and Jonghyun makes believe that they’re back to where they started. “It’s not that you can’t do everything I can do—the problem is if I leave you be, you start letting yourself think that. And I don’t know if I’m too hard on you, but I’m nicer to you than you are to yourself, and I’m not sorry.”

Silence.

Jonghyun counts his breaths, follows water stains like they’re some kind of map, and tries to ignore how his entire being is zeroing in on the place where he knows Taemin is, only a few inches away.

“Hyung,” Taemin says finally, and he sounds so normal Jonghyun immediately forgoes his vigil, wriggles onto his side and finds Taemin already there, watching him, waiting for him. “I can have ‘Already,’ right?”

“Mm, I was just teasing you.” Then Jonghyun catches up, narrows his eyes when Taemin beams at him. “How is that important right now? Did you listen to anything I just said?”

“Mm,” Taemin affirms, hiding behind his smile, and Jonghyun knows he’s having a hard time saying that much, even, but still.

“Taemin-ah,” he says, and his name always comes to Jonghyun so thoughtlessly, it’s like an excuse for everything that comes out of him afterwards. But still, since Taemin is expecting him to say something now, and Jonghyun wants to say it, “I wish you would tell me stuff. I don’t mean like what we were just talking about. Just…anything.”

Taemin stares into his face. “I know, hyung.”

Jonghyun circles around his own frustration, knows the way so well by now that he doesn’t have to be careful, because there’s more to it than that and he wants to get it out now while he’s still feeling okay, so it won’t be hard to look at Taemin later.

“And a lot of times I try to get you to open up, but I just end up putting my shit on you,” he says quickly, like it’ll hurt less or something. Taemin’s expression flickers, so again, he speeds up. “And then sometimes I just want to put everything on you, even though I know I’ll hate myself for it.” He laughs dully, finds absolution in the caramel brown comforter this time instead of the ceiling. It feels as scratchy as his throat. “Like right now.”

Taemin’s hand falls on his shoulder, pats it awkwardly before it slides up Jonghyun’s nape and into his hair, warm and gentle.

“Still, I like it when you talk to me,” Taemin says very quietly.

“I know,” Jonghyun says.

Jonghyun thinks that should be the end, no more talking for a while, but it figures Taemin barely lasts a minute, doesn’t even wait until Jonghyun can show his face again, before he says, “But hyung, the company finalized the album a month ago, and it’s coming out in like two weeks. Don’t you think they would have everything ready to go by now?”

Jonghyun waits.

And then, “You always think you can do whatever you want, hyung,” like Jonghyun is the one who didn’t realize.

And then, “I guess I can go back to my own room to sleep~”

And then, “Are you crying or something?”

And then and then and then, until Jonghyun’s smile grows too big to hide and he rolls over into the open.

 

**Dongsaeng**

 

“What the fuck!?”

“What?”

Jonghyun doesn’t reply right away, so Taemin mutes the anime Jonghyun left him with when Taemin gave him his bathroom back, hears Jonghyun babbling to himself, “Oh my God, what the fuck, what,” before Jonghyun raises his voice and shouts for him, “Taeminnie, come here, hurry!”

The three feet between the bed and the bathroom don’t give Taemin time to worry, and when he gets there Jonghyun just waves his hand in his face, and things don’t make any sense. It’s not until he reaches up and traps Jonghyun’s hand in his own, gets him to stop for a while, that he catches up.

“Oh my God,” pops out before he even thinks, and Taemin lets Jonghyun go.

Jonghyun eyes him, then puts on his patented brave face and reaches for him with his good hand, as if Taemin is the one freaking out. “Hyung is okay, don’t worry. It’ll go away on its own.”

“I know that,” Taemin says, and he does. It’s just, “Really weird. Like, really weird. Your hand is pink, hyung.”

“That’s all you can say?” Jonghyun demands, face falling open again.

Jonghyun got himself into this. Ever since Taemin went pink for a while back in January, Jonghyun has been obsessed, and now that he’s finally making his comeback he’s gone for it. The tour leg before this one, he kept going around to the four of them, fretting over whether he should do his eyebrows too and asking them about different shades and trying to argue if they didn’t share his favorite, and then they went back home and did their own thing and Taemin forgot all about it. The next time Taemin saw him, at the airport just a few days ago, his hair was the color of cherry blossoms. As of this morning his hand is as well, thanks to his shampoo probably.

Jonghyun gives Taemin a few seconds and then completely gives up on him.

“Forget it. It’s my fault for expecting you to help with anything,” Jonghyun laments, not taking his eyes off Taemin’s face, and Taemin doesn’t have anything to say to that, so he goes back into the room and sits cross-legged on Jonghyun’s bed, watches magical girls kick ass and hugs a pillow and waits for things to clear in that secret place in his chest.

A while later Jonghyun comes out after him, calm and dressed, and plants himself right next to him, wedging his thigh under Taemin’s knee and pressing against his arm, shoulder to elbow. It’s easier to pretend he cares about the world that needs saving on the television than to look at Jonghyun’s face right now, so he lets Jonghyun stare all he wants, lets him have the corner of his eye and concentrates on nothing.

And Jonghyun lets him get away with it for a little while, until Taemin finally realizes that the sound is still off and fumbles with the remote, and then he snorts right in his ear. “Hey, are you mad at _me_ now?”

Taemin turns on him.

“I mean, what am I supposed to say?” he bursts out. “Your hand _is_ pink. It _is_ weird, and you said yourself you’re fine, so I don’t get what I did wrong.”

Instead of giving him an answer, Jonghyun reaches up and puts his pink hand on Taemin’s face, eyes intent as he drags his palm down in a path of destruction that pulls Taemin’s eyelids shut, squishes his nose, then rolls his bottom lip down like a shutter and paints spit across Taemin’s chin. It’s weird and gross and Taemin doesn’t mind.

“It didn’t rub off on me anywhere else either when I tried it, so I guess we don’t have to worry about containment?” Jonghyun says, and Taemin doesn’t know why Jonghyun is trying so hard not to laugh now, now that it wouldn’t bug Taemin if he did.

There’s something to that. When he grabs at Jonghyun, somehow Jonghyun is ready for him, gets ahold of his arms and pushes Taemin down onto the bed, but Taemin barely has to touch him to set him off, and it’s over long before Jonghyun is willing to admit it, fighting through his laughter, feeble-armed and gasping. But he’s so warm and solid underneath Taemin that it makes him lightheaded, sneaks under his skin, and when it gets to be too much, he just sits down on top of Jonghyun and waits for his vision to clear. Jonghyun gives him as much time as he needs, total surrender, dark eyes and fragile smirk, growing hard against Taemin’s thigh, and somehow that scares some sense into Taemin, the idea that Jonghyun would let him do anything he wanted to him right now.

He gets off him. They have to be ready to go in less than an hour, first rehearsal of the day.

Somehow, it feels safer to rewind than sit here and wait for some new thing to happen, so Taemin says, “Hyung,” gives Jonghyun a couple seconds to course correct and then goes on, “Why do you always know what to say, when I never do?”

Jonghyun takes another minute before he answers. “I don’t, though. Maybe the things I say work on you, but that’s just you, that’s not me.”

“Okay, well, the things I say don’t even work on you. Most of the time talking just makes me feel stupid,” Taemin says, self-fulfilling prophecy. His blood is still singing, like his body can’t catch up.

“I’m the same as you,” Jonghyun says so easily. “Everybody probably is.”

Taemin doesn’t think so, but he doesn’t look for the words to set Jonghyun right. He’s beginning to think that instead of opening his mouth he should have gotten up and waited this out in the bathroom, maybe made an excuse and retreated to his own room.

But then Jonghyun says, “Taemin-ah,” and his voice cuts through everything, just like that.

Taemin wants to check on him, but he thinks he needs a little more time. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Taemin gives up, gives him what he thinks he wants and rolls over to look at him. Jonghyun is just lying there staring at the ceiling, though, not even playing hard to get or anything, and Taemin gets stuck, second-guessing everything.

“What is it?” he says again, resisting the thrill of dread in the pit of his stomach.

“You just made me think about some stuff, is all,” Jonghyun says vaguely, tossing him a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, and he’s already somewhere else. Taemin doesn’t understand how they could have started at the same point, and he’s left thinking maybe they didn’t. Maybe for Jonghyun the moments where nothing happens don’t last as long, don’t hold him back as much.

“Fine, I won’t ask,” Taemin huffs, and it takes too much effort to turn it into a joke, because really, he’s still asking.

Jonghyun keeps quiet for so long Taemin almost gives up. Almost.

“I don’t know what you think, but I’m not someone who can just say what people want to hear,” he says suddenly. “But sometimes…sometimes I wish the things I say for myself were also things people want to hear. That would be so nice, wouldn’t it?”

“ _I_ do, I just said,” Taemin says in a painful rush, because if he gives himself any time he thinks his throat will close. “Whatever you want to say, I want to hear it. I don’t care what it is.”

Taemin doesn’t know what this is about, if Jonghyun’s nerves are doing the talking now that he’s a month away from releasing his baby to the public, if talking to himself on the radio every night has somehow made his loneliness more real, if the substance of Jonghyun’s words is just another example of what Jonghyun is talking about, just another thing he’s wanted to say, and never has because he was afraid Taemin couldn’t take it. But that’s not fair, when all this time Taemin didn’t even _know._

He never does.

Jonghyun reaches over and strokes his hair back, forces his own face into something he probably thinks is a smile, and a minute ago, Taemin would have given anything to have his hands on him, have Jonghyun’s eyes on him, but now his stomach clenches into a fist, because.

“You’re one person, Taemin-ah,” is all Jonghyun says.

Taemin doesn’t know what he is to Jonghyun, knows it’s stupid and probably impossible to expect Jonghyun could ever see him the way he sees Jonghyun. There are only three years between them, but at the point their paths met, those three years were an ocean, and they've been so close for so long since then that neither of them knows what has to change to close that gap, when literally everything else between them has. And then Taemin will hit a wall. He’ll always be the child who used Jonghyun as a pillow and never realized that the only part of Jonghyun that ever fell asleep too was his arm under Taemin’s head, the child who couldn’t sing and fucked up lives and needed Jonghyun to jump in and rescue him all the time, the child who needs affirmation so badly that Jonghyun bends over backwards and happily makes an ass of himself trying to give it to him, the child who never stops taking and taking and taking. He wants to give, that’s the thing, wants to make Jonghyun feel as good as he makes Taemin feel, but the rules are always changing, and every time he reaches out his fingertips just barely brush the beginning of something.

“Hyung, do you care what I think of you?” His own voice seems to appear out of thin air.

Jonghyun shakes his head, says, “As long as you think of me,” and that’s probably supposed to be funny, or maybe it’s supposed to embarrass him, but Taemin doesn’t care what Jonghyun wants out of him this time, what words, what face.

“You listen to what everybody else says about you, all these people who barely know you, or don’t know you at all, and you let it get to you,” punches out of him, and then, “But I’m right here. I’ll always be right here, and I know you better than anyone.” And then he gets stuck, and for a moment all Taemin has is the new face Jonghyun is making that he hasn’t learned to read yet, the hand that reaches for him before Jonghyun rethinks and snatches it back, and the big white nothing inside. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to get out, so he just skips to the end, the important thing, “When I say I want to listen to you,” no, “When I say good things about you, you should stop trying to twist it into something bad. You should actually pay attention, and trust me, and believe me, because I know what I’m talking about.”

He needs to breathe.

“Wow, Taeminnie, when did you get so cool?” Jonghyun says, probably just to say something, clear the air, because nothing about him tells Taemin that he’s joking this time.

And Taemin…he doesn’t get himself, because he’s grateful. “You’re just realizing that now?”

“Taemin-ah,” Jonghyun says so quickly, like he was just getting that out of the way, like he wants to get to Taemin before their hearts stop pounding, but now he won’t meet Taemin’s eyes. “Could you try calling my name, just this once?”

It’s not weird, Taemin has done it a million times before, sometimes to fuck with Jonghyun, sometimes to console him, but never just because.

“Jonghyun-ah,” he tries, and the smile he gets in return is like the sun breaking on Jonghyun’s face.

Somehow it gets even easier when Jonghyun makes him say it again, easier still when Jonghyun demands, “Now call my name and tell me you love me,” and Taemin does, and Jonghyun steals a kiss, there and gone, and they both sit there on the bed, kind of dazed and smiling stupidly to themselves, shooting each other secret looks while the TV makes all kinds of noises in the background.

“What do you like about me?” Jonghyun asks him eventually, probably pushing his luck, but Taemin doesn’t care.

Taemin comes right out with it. “Everything.”

“That’s cheating,” Jonghyun insists, then hastens to add when Taemin opens his mouth, “Don’t say my face or my body, either.”

“I wasn’t going to, though?” Taemin says, just to give him a little push, but instead of hitting him, Jonghyun pouts, and that might be scarier.

“Taemin-ah~”

“Ummmm….that you’re honest?” Taemin says, and that sounds right, that’s the place where everything starts, and he already has too many things he could say. “You always try to act indifferent, but you’re so obvious, you can’t hide your feelings at all. You’re a terrible liar, too.”

And right on cue, Jonghyun’s face kind of sours, narrowed eyes and pinched brow, and there’s that tilt to his head, not the one that says he’s so pleased he’s forgotten what he looks like, the one that says he’s kind of ticked off and struggling to keep it inside.

And then Jonghyun gives up like he always does, says accusingly, “You tell me to listen to you and then you tell me stuff like this? Taemin-ahhhhhhh,” and faceplants onto the bed, and Taemin wants to laugh at him so badly.

“I like you when you’re being difficult, too, it’s cute,” Taemin says instead, crawling up and addressing himself to Jonghyun’s prone form, the crabby line of his shoulders. “Even though I never know what I’m supposed to do, it’s cute.”

Jonghyun can’t take that, either, and turns over, onto his side, curling in on himself and knotting his hand in his own hair, arm over his face. Groans, “Shit, so embarrassing.”

Taemin thinks he could probably do this to Jonghyun forever, but he doesn’t want to see whether it would start to bore either of them. And there are other things, too, that aren’t so easy to say, so he gives up his view and lays down instead, scoots up behind Jonghyun, gets an arm around his middle and hides his face in his back. Jonghyun lets him do it.

“And…” he takes a deep breath. “You’ve had to fight so hard to do your own thing, but you still try so hard to reach people, too. Sometimes I wish you’d give yourself a break, but then watching you makes me want to try as hard as you do.”

Jonghyun shifts under Taemin’s arm, like he’s going to turn around, but Taemin tightens his hold on him, and Jonghyun stills, then reaches up and gently uncurls Taemin’s nerveless fingers where they’ve clenched into his shirt, threads them together with his own.

“I like you,” Taemin says, because that’s all he can say now. “I just. I really, really like you.”

Jonghyun gives him some time, then says, “Taemin-ah,” pauses until Taemin gives him some kind of sign Taemin doesn’t know about himself, and asks him, “Do you like my hair?”

Taemin is totally lost. “Don’t you? You’ve wanted pink hair for like half a year now.”

“Not if you don’t,” Jonghyun presses him, insistent, and Taemin can never tell where flirty ends and stubborn begins with him.

He doesn’t really care about this stuff, just does whatever his stylist wants and then learns to like it (or not), but Jonghyun cares and Jonghyun is asking, so he gives it some thought. Thinks about the way Jonghyun tried so hard not to smile when Taemin finally picked the right shade first after picking wrong the last twelve times Jonghyun cornered him. Thinks about Jonghyun’s wide eyes when he came out mid-shower last night and pestered Taemin to check and see if he thought the color was already fading, if Jonghyun should skip washing his hair, even though Taemin knew he wouldn’t feel clean unless he did. Thinks about this morning’s Jonghyun, his pink hand and his pink mouth and his pink hair.

“It’s pretty,” he says, and this time he lets Jonghyun turn around so they’re face-to-face again, and time stops.

Except it doesn’t, not really. They should have left for the lobby five minutes ago, six minutes ago, seven, eight.


End file.
